Google Will Dismantle Its Floating Barge That Was Going To Be Used To Sell Google Glass

Getty ImagesLast year, the press discovered a floating barge in the San Francisco bay owned by Google.

Google, for a while, refused to talk about the barge. However, it eventually cracked and revealed that it was building a floating store that could be used for selling Glass.

That plan is apparently kaput now.

Tom Bell at the Portland Press Herald says Google is scrapping one of the barges it had floating in the Portland Harbor. The barge had 63 shipping containers stacked to create a four-story building.

That's all out the window. Bell reports, "The containers, though, will be disassembled at Turner's Island and scrapped, said Lance Hanna, deputy harbor master for Portland Harbor."

This is pretty much the perfect metaphor for Google Glass.

A year ago, there was boundless optimism about the product from Google and the tech press. This year Google is scaling back its ambitions, and it didn't even talk about Glass at its big developer conference, I/O.

The barges will have cost Google millions of dollars.